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Ratio makerI recently had one of those days that make all the others seem tremendous. It is like that one bull that should have been cut out but you decide to leave him in because he will make the good ones look better. In the cattle business, we call him a ratio maker. Well, I attempt to have the same mind set when it comes to those days that just don't go right. If you are involved in livestock agriculture in the mid-section of this country, you undoubtedly have had enough of those days in the past month, thanks to Mother Nature, to last for quite a while. The downhill slide started in mid-December when the 1973 Oliver 1755 tractor decided it was just too cold to get out of bed. When a warm day (relatively speaking) finally did show up, the tractor started only to gel up within 10 minutes. The month long tractor-starting drama concluded with my Oliver tractor assuming the role of a bear and apparently hibernating until spring. All of this led me into coercing my friend Joe Kary from Parmelee, S.D. into selling me back a tractor that Kelli and I bought new in 1995 but sold to Joe in 2001. Oh, it was a great trip up and back to retrieve this tractor that Kelli never thought we should have sold in the first place. I spent a full Monday, the best weather day for working cows and fixing corrals for spring calving that you could ever imagine, driving to South Dakota and back; but, it was worth it because I now have a tractor that will start and get things done properly with less stress. The day starts fine. It looks beautiful outside except for a little too much breeze coming from Kansas. But the days all seem to be more windy down there this year than normal, so again it seems like another day with a ton of opportunity for ranch accomplishments. As you might expect, I spend far too much time on this morning doing the radio and media related things that my daily chore list includes. News stories and ideas are gelling about as well as my Oliver tractor. Kelli has taken the old pickup to Howard's in Litchfield for another repair session and ends up waiting four hours for parts to show up. I finally make my way outside about 11:30 a.m. to get my tractor unloaded and get to work--or so I think. The first order of business is getting the tractor started...grind, grind, grind. It doesn't start and not only that but the battery must be so low that the starter doesn't disengage. The logical thing to do was to take the ground wire off of the battery to kill the grinding, right? Well, if you have never heard that batteries will explode, trust me it is not an exaggeration. There was a time when I cussed this tractor for how difficult it is to get to the battery behind the arm of the loader and behind the protective grill that is in the front. Today I am praising all of the cumbersome junk, because it might have saved the attachment of my head. Luckily enough, I escaped without injury and still I think "what a bad day." So instead of unloading my tractor, I leave it on the flatbed and take it to Howard's where we may as well have a bay with our name on it. Meanwhile, the load of wet distillers grain shows up and I have not yet made the hay bunker to store the feed in. Consequently, I now have a pile of wet distillers grain lying on the ground like a Sunday afternoon buffet for any wandering animal that decides that grass looks greener (or perhaps more golden) on the other side of the fence. In one last-ditch attempt to salvage a wasted day, just before dark I start to load a group of cows to haul to the last stalk field. A project that I wanted to start at 10 a.m. now started at 4:30 p.m. and it will be dark by 5:30. You can image that my frame of mind is not what it should be when two cows escape and I finally get 15 on the trailer. I haul them on the short trip to stalks and think "what a bad day," a day that I am sure resembles so many others in farming from time to time. However, my little drive time gave me a chance to really reflect upon the day. I didn't have a bad day. A bad day is when a fellow soldier, a friend, is killed next to you on the streets of Baghdad. A bad day is when a mother in Africa is hoping for a handful of rice to feed her kids and she doesn't get it. A bad day is what John Travolta experienced last week when his 16-year-old son died. Now that I really think about it, I didn't have a bad day at all. I had a ratio making day--the day that makes all others seem better. Editor's note: Trent Loos is a sixth generation United States farmer, host of the daily radio show, Loos Tales, and founder of Faces of Agriculture, a non-profit organization putting the human element back into the production of food. Get more information at www.FacesOfAg.com, or e-mail Trent at trent@loostales.com. 1/12/09 Date: 1/8/09
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